Lost til Tomorrow

frayed sentences drift

a word ~ maybe two

for something I’ll write later 

vanished in pumpkin soup 

bubbling on the stove, 

in the flour and nuts for 

bread dough rising; 

in the brutal wind, 

on my way to take out the trash

scribbled down on a note 

lost on the kitchen table.

I’ll clear off the table tomorrow………

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. 

Learn from it…tomorrow is a new day.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dreamshapes

All I wanted was one word.

Just one word to begin 

a string of words, 

   a sentence, 

      a paragraph 

to shape yesterday

   to shape today

      to shape tomorrow 

Yesterday’s shape?

   A full circle morning til night

Today’s shape?

   Circle ~ not yet complete

    Yet filled with reading, walking and home.

Tomorrow?

   Full of clear and cloudy skies

      Stories to tell and be told

All I wanted was one word. 

“There are not many original shapes or silhouettes

 ~ only a million variations.”

~ Charles James, designer

(1906 ~ 1978)

Silent Plea

 

Intention speaks 

    

    from the soul. 

The word spoken aloud 

gives it more weight, 

        

    a reminder ~ 

a breath from the soul. 

No demand

   No insistence 

To reach out

   To grasp intention 

       To work with its weight 

brings the silent plea to life.

“Intention is the core of all conscious life. 

Conscious intention colours and moves everything.”

~ Hsing Yun, Buddhist priest

(1927 - 2023)

Just One Word

One thing 

that’s all I want 

one thing 

one word 

one idea 

to get me started 

so the flow slips through 

the nerves and sinews of my arms 

from the few of pounds of my brain. 

The organ that is not a muscle 

but an idea, emotion, movement central. 

Programmed from birth with 

DNA and RNA and sparks of life 

so that we can move through our lives

 ~ in a very literal sense.

“The best tip for writing is just to write; to sit down and write, 

to begin doing it and not to be scared by the blank page.”

~ David Almond, author

Blindfolded

Taking steps

blindfolded 

to a dark horizon 

cautious 

each word counted 

in blocks and minutes

lifting the blindfold only 

to read the next sentence 

shape it with meaning

knowing each step taken 

gets through to the end.

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard 

and you put one word after another until its done. 

It’s that easy, and that hard.

~ Neil Gaiman, author 

Squirrel Chatter

 

Nerds? Are they ever without a camera?! I wasn't even posing; she just about caught me! But I scampered ~ that is the word those two legged things say ~ down from a really good branch. I had spied a rather juicy morsel and I just had to get to it before any of my buddies did. I was really more interested in food than if I was presented on Facebook. 

“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be 

a squirrel any more. I’d rather be a bird!”

~ Erin Hunter, Moonrise

Silent Whispers ~ 2

Silent goals for each New Year

barely a whisper ~

no grand visions of endings, beginnings.

what will be or when they will be. 

I stay present with intent to honour 

each little word or phrase 

creating them as elegantly as I am able.

“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”

~ Flannery O’Connor

To Say No.

No.

A tiny word

Whispered

Barely a glimmer of its better self.

Uttered aloud

Better ~ the glimmer becomes a glow

Spoken with conviction

The glow is powerful.

NO.

A tiny word.

“Real freedom is saying ‘no’ without giving a reason.”

~ Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

Spell and Sparkle

no photos to stir my imagination 

no fit to my words 

one leg knocked from under

standing still slowly

breathing into my soul

my feet feel solid beneath me

the magic of the written word

spirals and curls from my fingers

to spell and sparkle this humble poem

“Words and magic are two powerful forces that can change the world.”

~ Amy Neftzger, The War of Words

A Look Below

Qu'appelle Valley, 2012

Substitutions for last year’s resolutions can be two fold. One: renewing a resolution made the previous January with just a bit of tweaking to see if this new year could be better. More motivation, not as much work/life imbalance… or any reason I need to not continue forward. The second part of substitutions for last year’s resolutions are to play word games! Change resolution to commitment. That should work. Actually, I’ve tried both solutions and neither work very well. Work/life balance ~ now retirement/life balance ~ just keeps tipping over! As far as the word games, I get so caught up in the game, I forget why I started playing them!

New Year’s resolutions have never been my strong suit. Making them has been easy ~ more like a wish list without a plan. Following through on any resolutions is another story completely. In January, 2019, I learned about the concept of ‘going deeper not wider’ from Winnipeg writer David Cain. An interview with Mary Hynes on CBC radio and David's blog at https://www.raptitude.com, suggested a change in perspective for his readers. Using the theory ‘going deeper not wider’ I have found an anchor. I no longer make New Year’s resolutions (i.e. commitments) in a wish list kind of way. Instead, decisions from previous year’s commitments are reviewed. Do I still want to go forward with any one of them, do a bit of the infamous tweaking, or continue to move forward? I have learned to follow through on the projects I have chosen. Some of them have been completed ~ like painting my closet. Some are ongoing ~ like clearing the clutter of years of moving. The most important is writing. Not just this blog, but another project that I took on over a year ago. And then there was the issue of retirement. When I first learned of a Depth Year, retirement was close and really needed my attention. This was one of my early projects that threatened to overwhelm and derail me.

Retirement has suggested, at least to me, stopping. Stopping has seldom been an option, so I decided last year to look more deeply into what retirement means for me, my relationship to life and all it has to offer. There is still much to do, but with the concept of ‘deeper not wider’, that most unpleasant feeling of being overwhelmed was placed as an issue for review using this new perspective. As a result, I've been learning how to take tippy toes into this new life in small steps, cheering myself on and listening to the wisdom of friends and family.

“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls, must dive below.”

~ John Dryden, All for Love